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49 free Hard Rock and Roll trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This hard rock and roll trivia quiz is for the people who know the B-sides. It asks who actually played on Rocket 88, how Willie Kizart's amplifier ended up producing the first distorted guitar on record, which country song Chuck Berry rebuilt into Maybellene, why the Crickets needed a band name, how Decca misspelled Holley, what theme record Alan Freed used in Cleveland, how long the FBI spent failing to decode Louie Louie, and who was paid at Monterey when everyone else played for free. There are questions on the pioneers, the British Invasion, the festivals of 1969, the guitars themselves and the payola scandal. It is written for serious record collectors, music-history teachers and quiz hosts who need a round nobody sweeps. Almost everything sits at hard or expert level; our main rock and roll trivia page and the rock and roll trivia for seniors quiz cover the friendlier ground. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia article on the artist, song, label or event, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
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Q 01Rocket 88 (1951) was credited to Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, but whose band actually played on it?
Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm
Brenston was Turner's saxophonist; the record went to number one on the R&B chart and helped fund Sun Records.
Q 02Legend says Willie Kizart's damaged amp on Rocket 88 was repaired with what, creating its fuzz tone?
Wadded newspaper
After the amp fell off the car on Highway 61, Sam Phillips stuffed the torn speaker cone with wadded newspaper and kept the resulting distortion on the record.
Q 03Sam Phillips opened his Memphis Recording Service at what address in January 1950?
706 Union Avenue
Phillips opened the Memphis Recording Service at 706 Union Avenue in January 1950; Sun Records launched from the same storefront in 1952, funded partly by Rocket 88.
Q 04Who bought the Sun label from Sam Phillips in 1969?
Shelby Singleton
Shelby Singleton, a former Mercury Records producer, bought Sun from Sam Phillips in 1969 and reissued the catalogue through his Sun International company.
Q 05Elvis's That's All Right, cut at Sun in 1954, was a 1946 blues number by which artist?
Arthur Crudup
Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup recorded That's All Right in 1946; Elvis's Sun version was aired by Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips on Red, Hot and Blue days after the July 1954 session.
Q 06Elvis made his first television appearance on a KSLA-TV broadcast of which radio show, the Opry's rival?
Louisiana Hayride
The Hayride booked him for a year of Saturday nights and its drummer D. J. Fontana turned the trio into a quartet.
Q 07What newspaper story inspired Heartbreak Hotel's writers Mae Boren Axton and Tommy Durden?
A lonely man's suicide
Durden showed Axton a newspaper story about a lonely man's suicide whose note read 'I walk a lonely street'; Elvis cut it on 10 January 1956 and it became his first million-seller.
Q 08Elvis first heard Hound Dog performed by which Las Vegas lounge act, whose version he copied?
Freddie Bell and the Bellboys
Elvis saw Freddie Bell and the Bellboys play their comic arrangement in Las Vegas in April 1956; the song had been a 1953 hit for Big Mama Thornton, written by Leiber and Stoller.
Q 09Elvis paid how much for Graceland in March 1957?
$102,500
Elvis paid $102,500 for Graceland in March 1957 after sending his parents to find a farmhouse-style property with a $100,000 budget.
Q 10Chuck Berry's Maybellene was his adaptation of which country song?
Ida Red
Berry reworked the old fiddle tune Ida Red, a Bob Wills hit, into Maybellene; Leonard Chess preferred it to his blues material and Willie Dixon played bass on the session.
Q 11What was Chuck Berry's only number-one single?
My Ding-a-Ling
My Ding-a-Ling, a live novelty recording from 1972, topped the Billboard Hot 100; Maybellene had reached number one only on the R&B chart seventeen years earlier.
Q 12Which songwriter was hired to clean up the lyrics of Little Richard's Tutti Frutti?
Dorothy LaBostrie
Bumps Blackwell brought in local writer Dorothy LaBostrie to replace the obscene lyrics at the September 1955 New Orleans session; Pat Boone's sanitised cover then charted higher on the pop chart than Richard's own.
Q 13Little Richard's breakthrough came at which Los Angeles label, run by Art Rupe?
Specialty Records
Q 21Alan Freed's Moondog Coronation Ball, called the first rock and roll concert, was shut down in 1952 at which venue?
Cleveland Arena
The Cleveland Arena on 21 March 1952 held about 10,000, but roughly twice that many turned up with duplicate and counterfeit tickets, and police stopped the show after the opening act.
Q 22Freed quit WINS in May 1958 after a Boston riot at a show headlined by whom?
Jerry Lee Lewis
Jerry Lee Lewis headlined Freed's Big Beat show at the Boston Arena on 3 May 1958; after the violence Freed was charged with inciting a riot and resigned from WINS.
Q 23Which DJ told the Congressional payola hearings he had taken $22,000 to play a record?
Lloyd Price suggested he send a demo to Specialty Records in February 1955; Art Rupe bought out his Peacock contract and sent him to record in New Orleans with Bumps Blackwell.
Q 14Buddy Holly's real surname was Holley. What changed it?
A misspelling in his Decca contract
He signed with Decca in February 1956 and simply kept the error.
Q 15Why did Buddy Holly's band record That'll Be the Day under the name the Crickets?
To get around Decca's contract limitations
Holly's 1956 Decca deal barred re-recording its songs for five years, so to get around Decca's contract limitations the Clovis remake went out on Brunswick as the Crickets and topped the US and UK charts in 1957.
Q 16Which Nashville producer, famous for Patsy Cline, produced Buddy Holly's unhappy early Decca sessions?
Owen Bradley
Owen Bradley ran Holly's 1956 Decca sessions in Nashville, which yielded no hits; wanting more control, Holly drove to Norman Petty's studio in Clovis and cut the demos that made his name.
Q 17Which bassist in Buddy Holly's Winter Dance Party band gave up his plane seat to the Big Bopper?
Waylon Jennings
Waylon Jennings, playing bass on the tour, gave his seat to the flu-stricken Big Bopper; Tommy Allsup lost his to Ritchie Valens on a coin toss, and drummer Carl Bunch was in hospital with frostbite.
Q 18What type of aircraft crashed near Clear Lake, Iowa, on 3 February 1959?
A Beechcraft Bonanza
The chartered Beechcraft Bonanza crashed minutes after take-off from Mason City in snow; pilot Roger Peterson was flying the group toward Fargo for a show in Moorhead, Minnesota.
Q 19Bill Haley's band was renamed the Comets over Labor Day weekend 1952. What had they been called?
The Saddlemen
As the Saddlemen they had already covered Rocket 88 in June 1951, and Crazy Man, Crazy charted in 1953.
Q 20Bo Diddley was born Ellas Otha Bates in which Mississippi town?
McComb
Born in McComb, Mississippi, in 1928, he was adopted by his mother's cousin and raised on Chicago's South Side as Ellas McDaniel, later famous for his rectangular guitars.
Phil Lind of WAIT
Phil Lind of Chicago's WAIT admitted taking $22,000 to play one record; Dick Clark testified too and survived, partly because he had divested his music-industry holdings.
Q 24How long did the FBI investigate the Kingsmen's Louie Louie for obscenity before giving up?
31 months
The Bureau spent 31 months from 1964 analysing the record before ruling it unintelligible at any speed; it missed drummer Lynn Easton yelling an expletive at 0:54 after fumbling a fill.
Q 25Louie Louie was written and first recorded in 1956 by which R&B musician?
Richard Berry
Richard Berry wrote it in 1955 after hearing René Touzet's band play El Loco Cha Cha and recorded it with the Pharaohs in 1956; the Kingsmen's 1963 version made it a garage-rock anthem.
Q 26Chubby Checker's The Twist set what record?
First song to hit number one in two separate runs
It hit the top in September 1960 and again in January 1962 when high society belatedly caught the craze.
Q 27Ricky Nelson's 'Poor Little Fool' was the first number one on which new listing in 1958?
Billboard's Hot 100
Poor Little Fool topped the very first Billboard Hot 100, dated 4 August 1958; Nelson went on to place more than fifty songs on the chart through 1973.
Q 28Cliff Richard's 1958 single often called Britain's first authentic rock and roll record was what?
Move It
Move It, written by Ian Samwell and released in August 1958, reached number two in the UK; Richard, born Harry Webb in Lucknow, India, then ruled British pop with the Shadows until the Beatles.
Q 29John Lennon's pre-Beatles skiffle group took its name from what?
Their school song
Quarry Bank High School's song ran "Quarry men old before our birth"; Lennon formed the group in November 1956 at sixteen.
Q 30Stuart Sutcliffe bought the bass guitar that got him into the Beatles with money from what?
Selling a painting
Sutcliffe raised the money by selling a painting: John Moores bought his canvas from the 1959 John Moores exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery for £65, and Lennon talked him into a Höfner bass.